HUD AFGE COUNCIL 222

Affiliated with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), we are comprised of 40 HUD Locals throughout
the U.S. Members elect delegates and the Council Executive Board meets monthly to set our direction/priorities.

FIGHT BACK!

UPDATE: September 25, DOJ files notice to appeal (see article below)UPDATE: August 25, Judge strikes down Executive Orders!July 7 - AFGE.org is providing information on how you can FIGHT BACK (in below link).

This news tracker holds legislation that affects all of us as HUD employees and as Federal employees.
- Find your Senator
- Find your House Representative
- Find, review and easily sign up for e:alerts on bills at Congress.govDO NOT contact congress on duty time or use agency equipment!

H.R. 1293 - Would amend Title 5, United States Code, to require that the office of Personnel Management submit an annual report to Congress
relating to the use of official time by Federal employees. Click "Read More" and sign up for alerts on this bill.Update:
10/05/2017 Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar

S.742 - Prohibits a fed agency from awarding a bonus to employee for 5 years after adverse finding, would also require
employee to repay any bonuses awarded for any year in which the adverse finding made. Update:Still on legislative calendar

H.R.5202 - Waters (D-CA)
Prohibits HUD from relocating to any core office of MFHSG any asset mgmt position that, as of this bill's enactment, is located at a non-core office of that Office.
"Core office" is a regional hub office in ATL, CHI, FtWorth, NYC, or SanFran Latest action: None

2019 federal pay raise in final stages, Trump administration says

Federal News Network, March 20 - The executive order and associated tables that will make the 1.9 percent federal pay raise official for civilian employees in 2019 is nearing completion, the Trump administration said Wednesday. "We're in the final legal clearance stage," Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters. "I know that sounds like you´ve heard that before. To me this is an object lesson in the complexity of our pay systems."

Weichert did not provide a specific timeline for when the federal pay raise would be made official. A spokeswoman for Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, previously told Federal News Network could come as soon as the March 22 pay check or as late as the April 5 check. read article

GovExec, March 19 - The Trump administration asked Congress as part of its fiscal 2020 budget to approve legislation that makes it easier to fire or discipline federal workers and to make a series of pro-management changes to the law governing collective bargaining rights at federal agencies.

The General Services Administration's budget justification for 2020 includes an array of legislative proposals pertaining to the Office of Personnel Management, premised on the idea that Congress will approve the White House's plan to redistribute OPM's various functions among GSA, the Defense Department and the Executive Office of the President. Included in its strategy to modernize the civil service, along with plans to issue new pay systems and temporary hiring authorities, is a request for Congress to codify the provisions of a 2018 executive order, since struck down by a federal court, to shorten the firing process. If enacted, the standard length of performance improvement periods for federal employees would be 30 days, although agencies could choose to extend such periods on a case-by-case basis. read article

Federal Employees Would Get Less Leave Under Trump's 2020 Budget

GovExec, March 18 - President Trump's fiscal 2020 budget request includes a proposal to fundamentally change how federal employees accrue and take paid time off, and to reduce the overall number of leave days available to them. According to detailed budget documents released Monday, the White House proposes consolidating federal workers' annual and sick leave into one pool of paid time off, citing such a model's popularity in the private sector.

Under the current system, as laid out in Title 5 of the U.S. Code, in addition to 10 paid federal holidays, federal workers receive up to 13 sick days each year, and 13 to 26 vacation days, depending on an employee's length of service. The new proposal, which likely would require Congress's approval, would create one consolidated category of leave from which employees can pull as needed, and reduce the total number of days off by an unspecified amount.

American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox said reducing the total amount of leave available to federal workers is wrongheaded, especially as Congress considers whether to begin offering paid family leave to new parents.
"Reducing the amount of vacation and sick leave federal employees receive is a draconian proposal that will make it even harder for agencies to recruit and retain new workers," Cox said. "AFGE believes federal employees need more paid time off to balance their work and home lives, which is why we strongly endorse bipartisan legislation introduced in the House that would provide all federal employees with 12 weeks of paid family leave." read article

White House Pushes Performance-Based Pay Without Any Money to Implement It

President Trump again argued for an end to across-the-board pay increases for federal workers in his fiscal 2020 budget proposal, advocating that the government move to a performance based pay model. But there's just one problem: There's no extra money to implement such a change.

Documents released Monday that provide greater detail about the provisions of the budget request outlined last week confirm the White House plans to freeze the pay of civilian federal workers next year. As officials argued last year, the administration said that in order to begin an effort to introduce performance based pay, agencies must forego across-the-board pay increases. read article

Feds Won't Be Getting Their Pay Raise This Week

Govexec.com, March 7 - Three weeks ago, President Trump signed an appropriations package that included a 1.9 percent pay increase for federal civilian employees this year, overriding his executive order last December freezing workers' pay in 2019. The raise was retroactive to January 1. But as feds examine their pay checks tomorrow, they will find no change in compensation. In order for the pay raise, which includes a 1.4 percent across-the-board increase and an average 0.5 percent increase in locality pay, to take effect, Trump must issue another executive order and the Office of Personnel Management must publish new pay tables for each of the various federal compensation systems. read article

Federal News Network, March 6 - Maybe the third, fourth or fifth time is the charm. House lawmakers on Tuesday again revived their attempts to pass a paid family leave bill for federal employees. This time, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), along with House Majority Speaker Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Reps. Jennifer Wexton and Don Beyer (D-Va.), have introduced the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act.
The legislation would guarantee up to 12 weeks of paid leave for federal employees to witness the birth, adoption or fostering of a new child and care for a new child or family member with a serious medical condition. The leave would also apply to federal employees who have a serious medical condition themselves and need time to recover.
The United States and Papua New Guinea are the only countries in the world that don't have paid maternity leave programs written into law. read article

Govexec.com, October 19 - A three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Thursday mostly denied a request by the Trump administration to expedite its appeal of a U.S. District Court ruling overturning the key provisions of three controversial workforce executive orders. read article

Trump Administration Appeals Court Ruling On Workforce EOs

Govexec.com, Sept 25 - The Justice Department on Tuesday filed a notice that it would appeal a recent court decision that struck down three controversial workforce executive orders President Trump signed earlier this year to make it easier to fire federal workers and reduce the influence of federal employee unions.

The case will go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

In a notice filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Assistant Attorney General Joseph Hunt said the administration will seek to overturn the August decision by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, which found that the key provisions of the executive orders were unlawful. read article

Govexec.com - August 25 - U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson late Friday night struck down most provisions of the Trump administration´s controversial workforce executive orders, concluding that they conflicted with the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.

Jackson found that the three executive orders, which seek to make it easier to fire federal workers and significantly reduce how unions can collectively bargain and represent employees, disregard Congress´ conclusion that good-faith labor-management negotiations are "in the public interest." read article

federalnewsradio.com - August 25 - In a highly-anticipated decision, a federal district judge invalidated nine provisions of the president's executive orders on official time, collective bargaining and employee removals, in response to a series of legal challenges from a coalition of federal unions. The decision, which came late Friday night, prevents agencies from implementing or enacting the following provisions of the president's EOs:

1) The imposition of a 25 percent cap on the use of official time,
2) The prohibition against employees' right to petition and communicate with Congress,
3) The ban on the use of official time by union representatives to prepare and present grievances,
4) The one-hour per bargaining unit employee formula to be applied to set an aggregate cap on the use of official time,
5) The limitations placed on unions' use of agency facilities, such as office space and computers,
6) The exclusion of challenges to performance ratings and incentive pay from the scope of the negotiated grievance procedure,
7) The limitation of performance improvement periods (PIPs) to 30 days, with agencies alone having the discretion to apply longer periods,
8) The direction to agencies to press for the exclusion of removals from the scope of the negotiated grievance procedure, and,
9) The prohibition against bargaining over the "permissive" subjects. read article

Government Exec, July 26 - After months of posturing by the Trump administration and federal employee unions, both sides had their day in court Wednesday, as a federal judge spent four hours challenging both sides over the president's recent workforce executive orders.

More than a dozen federal employee unions have sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block implementation of the executive orders, challenging their legality on a number of fronts. They have asserted that the orders conflict with the Civil Service Reform Act and that the act precludes the president from weighing in on collective bargaining altogether.

Jackson said she would take the arguments raised under advisement and issue a written ruling in the coming days. But she had one broader critique for how the Trump administration analyzed the Civil Service Reform Act in crafting its executive orders.

"You were very careful in citing the ´effective operation of government´ aspect of the law, but that´s only one aspect Congress was concerned about when they wrote it," she said. "Congress makes it very clear that it believes effective unions—and collective bargaining—are in the public interest. But these EOs are about half of that balance and not the other."
read article

Government Exec, July 24 - Attorneys for the government plan to argue Wednesday that a federal court lacks jurisdiction to hear a legal challenge against President Trump´s recent workforce executive orders, and that unions were premature in filing the challenge. But a cursory look at the actions taken by the Trump administration and federal agencies since the orders´ enactment in May calls those claims into question. read article

AFGE Recounts Evictions, 'Union Busting' at Federal Agencies

Government Exec, July 12 - In a call with reporters, American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox said that union access to office space is integral to labor groups being able to meet with and represent front-line employees as required by the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. Union leaders representing employees at the Social Security Administration, the Veterans Affairs Department and the Bureau of Prisons said management is moving to evict unions from office space, preventing them from taking documents off-site and blocking them from using official time or unpaid leave to represent workers.

"Union officials at the Social Security Administration are being stripped of access to vital tools that help us represent working people as we are required to do by law, including telephones, computers, Internet access, and even bulletin boards," Cox said. "And as of yesterday, management has removed union access to all meeting rooms on agency property."

John Kostelnik, president of AFGE Local 3969, which represents Bureau of Prisons employees in Victorville, Calif., said the administration´s implementation of the executive order has hamstrung the agency's ability to respond to the massive influx of detainees from the White House's zero tolerance policy for undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. read article

Government Exec, June 19 - A federal judge announced Monday that she is consolidating three different legal challenges
brought against President Trump's recent workforce executive orders, and has scheduled a hearing date of July 25.

In an order issued June 18, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia Ketanji Brown Jackson consolidated all three cases, citing their similarity in facts and legal questions. She also agreed to "expedited briefing" of the case, meaning the court will skip traditional preliminary phases of the case and proceed directly to discussion of the merits, with a motion hearing scheduled for July 25. read article

Federalnewsradio.com, June 18 - The Department of Housing and Urban Development is moving quickly to implement President Donald Trump's recent executive order on official time by telling federal employee unions they can no longer use federal facilities or resources to do the organizations´ work. And the Social Security Administration and Department of Health and Human Services may be following in their footsteps.

HUD told the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Federation of Federal Employees that it wants to engage in midterm negotiations to implement the requirements under the EO. But one key proposal submitted by the agency would be for the unions to vacate federal office space by July 15.

"No union representative, when acting on behalf of the union, may be permitted the use of government property or any other agency resources. Such property and resources include office or meeting space, reserved parking spaces, phones, computers, computer systems, copy machines, paper, filing cabinets, keys, scanners, external drives, fax machines, use of printing services, subscriptions to information services (cyberdfeds, etc.) and all other government property or resources," HUD told AFGE on June 14. "The union shall have until July 15, 2018, to vacate all offices they currently occupy, return all government property they currently possess and cease using government resources. This applies to field and HQ." read article.

FIGHT BACK Against the Executive Orders!

NOW - AFGE.org and Council 222 ask you to FIGHT BACK against the three Executive Orders by clicking on the link at the end of this paragraph. When you click the link you will see the following notice, please comply - IMPORTANT: This information should not be downloaded using government equipment, read during duty time or sent to others using government equipment, because it suggests action to be taken in support of or against legislation. Do not use your government email address or government phone in contacting your Member of Congress.

House Democrats Join Fight Against Workforce Executive Orders

Government Exec, June 14 A group of 23 House Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Whip Steny Hoyer,
demanded Thursday that President Trump rescind three controversial executive orders that seek to make it easier for agencies to fire federal workers and significantly curb the influence of federal employee unions. In a letter to Trump, the lawmakers said the executive orders erode statutorily required protections for whistleblowers, and make it easier to politicize hiring and firing decisions in the federal workplace. read article

Republican Lawmakers Ask Trump to Repeal Workforce Executive Orders

Government Exec, June 13 A group of 21 House Republicans sent a letter to President Trump Sunday asking him to reverse course on three controversial executive orders aimed at making it easier to fire federal workers and curbing the influence of federal employee unions. In the letter, the GOP members of Congress touted the work of federal employees and asked the White House to rescind the executive orders and uphold the current law. read article

AFGE Sues to Block Official Time Executive Order

Government Exec, May 31 -
The largest union representing federal employees sued the Trump administration Wednesday over President Trump´s executive order significantly curbing the use of official time by union representatives, arguing the edict violates the First Amendment and exceeds the president's constitutional authority.

In a lawsuit filed at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the American Federation of Government Employees said the White House's Executive Order Ensuring Transparency, Accountability and Efficiency in Taxpayer Funded Union Time Use violates the First Amendment-guaranteed freedom of association and effectively rewrites portions of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act without the assent of Congress. read article

Trump goes after Feds in latest executive orders

Federal Times, May 27 -
In three executive orders signed May 25, 2018, President Donald Trump took aim at making federal employees easier to fire while cutting back on union time.

The first order fulfils a longstanding goal of the Trump administration in making it easier for the government to fire poor performers from federal positions. The order would limit the amount of time an employee under investigation for misconduct could spend on probation and encourage firings.

The second order specifically targets the use of official time, which allows federal employees to conduct union activities such as representing employees in disputes and negotiating contracts with the agency, by stating that federal employees must spend at least 75 percent of their time doing government work.

The use of official time is protected under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, and the amount of official time used by employees within an agency is usually up to the negotiations between unions and the agency.

The third of the executive orders calls for the renegotiation of such contracts, placing the responsibility for the negotiating strategy with the Office of Management and Budget within the White House and requiring that union contracts are posted online. read article

Govexec.com, April 5 - About 25,000 federal employees per year could face a massive new tax liability under a provision of the overhaul of the U.S. Tax Code President Trump signed into law this year, thanks to the removal of a deduction that helped employees forced to relocate by their agency. The issue particularly impacts senior executives whose mobility is required as part of the job, as well as certain occupations—such as air traffic controllers—who are frequently asked to move around. As part of the relocation services it offers, the federal government pays for employees' moving costs related to household goods. That benefit was previously tax deductible and handled by the employee's agency. The tax reform shepherded through Congress by Republicans last year removed that deduction, and now, with guidance unclear, agencies are passing the full burden on to the employees. read article

HUD Attempts to Limit Bargaining with Union

October 16 - HUD has refused to pay the travel expenses of Union negotiators in an effort to avoid bargaining with AFGE
Council 222 over what the Department has characterized as "union-initiated changes."

When the Council requested data related to HUD’s expenditures on bargaining-related travel, HUD refused
to provide the information. HUD said that it could not respond to the Council’s FOIA request because it was "very broad," and that
it "would be quite costly to produce" the information requested because of the many hours of professional search time that would be required.

In spite of the difficulties imagined by the FOIA office, the labor relations office was able to provide some of the information
the Council requested under federal labor-management statutes: Data related to travel expenses for Union negotiators for the past two years
was provided (the Union had requested data for the past three years).

The Employee and Labor Relations Division, however, refused to provide data on travel expenses incurred by management negotiators. The Union
has to wonder what HUD is hiding related to managers´ travel.

Given the current political animus against public sector unions, HUD’s recent actions seem to be part of a concerted effort to marginalize
the Union and remove employee protections. In recent months, HUD has:

• Refused to negotiate with the Union over the Department’s recognition of a group representing other employees in the bargaining unit in what appeared to be a violation of the Union’s right to exclusive representation.
• Claimed the Department did not have to negotiate what it called "union-initiated bargaining." The Federal Labor Relations Authority upheld the Union´s unfair labor practice complaint, and ordered HUD to the bargaining table.
• Refused to pay for Union negotiators’ travel expenses in cases of so-called union-initiated bargaining.
• Refused to provide current versions of proposed handbooks before negotiations in an effort to keep Union negotiators ignorant of the issues before they reach the bargaining table.

HUD says it wants to work with the Union, but these actions don’t support that claim.

Our Main Contract

The new Main Contract reflects the work of many talented union negotiators. It contains new provisions allowing employees to both telework and maxiflex (see Article 16) as well as a shortened two step grievance process (Article 51). Previous contracts can be found within the Library link.

New Employees PowerPoint Presentation and Information

As a Council, we primarily bargain (at the national level) issues that impact your working conditions. Past negotiations have resulted in flextime, credit hours, telework, and other workplace benefits.
We also work with HUD constituents to advocate for HUD programs, and fight wasteful contracting out of federal work.
Please keep in mind that we are a volunteer organization; we elect our leadership from our membership. So it's very important that the best employees become union members and activists.
As a bargaining unit employee, you are eligible for membership. If you have not already done so, we encourage you to talk with your Local President.
Locals are the key to enforcing the benefits we negotiate at a national level. Without strong and active Locals, the contract
is just paper. Also, we encourage you to explore our website. Our new employee power point presentation can answer many of your questions
about what the union does at HUD. And our bargaining page incudes information on the latest bargaining issues.
Again, welcome to HUD. We care deeply about HUD and its mission. We believe that respect in the workplace results in productive and creative employees. We hope you do, too.
Download our Welcome To HUD powerpoint presentation and contact your Local President (listed on our About Us page)
if you have any questions! To join, fill out an SF-1187
and hand it to your Local President!

The Department of Labor June 2, 2006 Final Rule requires labor organizations subject to the Civil
Service Reform Act of 1978, the Foreign Service Act of 1980 and the Congressional Accountability Act
of 1995 to periodically inform their members of their rights as union members. The Final Rule will help
ensure that federal union members are given basic understanding of: 1) rights as union members; 2) responsibilities
of union officers.